Are We Burning Out from Too Many Meetings?

Are you tired of working from home? Or maybe just tired from always being at home? Since we started working remotely last March, I will admit that I transitioned far better than I expected.

After almost a year of “working different”, I have established new routines and it feels like second nature now (for the most part at least!). But, I’ve certainly experienced those moments where I wished we could be back in the office again- if for nothing else the change of scenery! 

Some of us are in studio apartments having to eat, sleep, work and exercise in the same few hundred square-feet.  Many of us also have kids that are attending school virtually and are having to deal with the extra responsibilities of overseeing their remote learning. On top of that, we all have elevated levels of stress from the uncertainty brought on by the pandemic.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve definitely enjoyed the benefits of working from home- I certainly do not miss waking up at 5am! But being in the house all day long can have its downsides too. Without the physical separation of going into the office, our work life and home life have blended together making it harder to set boundaries.

While I don’t necessarily miss the commute, I will say that it served a purpose. In the morning, I would use the one hour train ride into the office to mentally prep for the day. The ride home gave me a chance to reflect and decompress. By the time I made it home, I had put work away and was ready to be fully present with my family. 

I also miss the quick meetings that occurred organically between associates in a shared workspace. The “accidental collisions” in the hallways, the brainstorming sessions with colleagues huddled around a whiteboard, the catch-up meeting over coffee or that finance meeting made a little more enjoyable thanks to a catered lunch! Now all of these have been replaced with webex meetings. 

With everything turning into an Outlook calendar event, meetings started to creep in earlier in the day and end later than usual. All of this creates a sense of meeting fatigue and contributes to the burnout people have been feeling.  

In addition, when our work day is being taken up by all these meetings, there isn’t as much time to get our actual work done. This means we are waking up earlier and/or staying up later just to finish all of our tasks and deliverables. 

At LoyaltyOne, we were inspired by some of the actions other leading organizations have put in place and we recently issued our own set of meeting guidelines. Here are some of the things we are doing to help with meeting fatigue and burnout:

• No meetings before 9 or after 4:30 to give people some time to start their day and wrap things up before they sign off
• No meetings between 12-1 (everyone deserves a lunch break!) and limited meetings on Friday afternoons
• Encouraging people to hold shorter meetings and to double check that a meeting is really necessary before scheduling 
• We launched MindBeacon- a digital therapy platform available to our employees and their immediate family members to help with our frame of minds when life feels overwhelming (i.e., stress, panic, anxiety, depression, sleep apnea, PTSD, etc.). 
• We also enhanced our wellness subsidy this year for our associates to use towards things such as: new running shoes, virtual yoga or personal training sessions, smoking cessation programs or towards a sit/stand desk or fitness equipment. 

What do you most enjoy about working from home or what do you miss the most about being in the office? I’m also curious to hear what others are doing to help with meeting fatigue and burnout.